What Happens to a Marriage When You Retire Abroad (And What if it Breaks?)
- Caesar Sedek
- 4 days ago
- 7 min read
People love the fantasy of retiring abroad: two people strolling through narrow streets, coffee cups clinking on a sunlit table, life finally slowing down to the rhythm they always wanted. And yes, some parts of that are real. But the thing no glossy article says — the thing I’ve started thinking about more and more when I talk to couples planning their move to Italy — is that a relocation this big doesn’t magically strengthen a marriage. It magnifies it.
When you remove the daily scaffolding of your old life — the jobs, the commutes, the errands, the familiar tension-release cycle of American living — you’re left with two people and a blank canvas. For some, it’s liberating. For others, it’s the first time in years they’ve really looked at each other without the distractions.
I see this every time I’m on a call with couples preparing for Italy. You can tell a lot in the first five minutes. Who leads, who follows. Who overexplains. Who’s nervous. Who’s pretending not to be nervous. Who interrupts. Who defers. It’s not judgment. It’s simply the recognition that two people can want the same destination for very different reasons, with very different tolerances for risk, uncertainty, and reinvention.
And then I think about my own marriage. My wife and I don’t see everything the same way about the move. That’s not a crisis. It’s marriage. You don’t choose a partner so you can march in lockstep for 40 years. But I’d be lying if I said our conversations about the future didn’t occasionally surface friction. You can love each other deeply and still disagree about pace, timing, money, or the hundred small details that make up a life. And if we’re being honest, the idea that everything will be roses just because the view improves is wishful thinking.
Moving abroad later in life doesn’t erase the strain points. It amplifies them.
Different Priorities in a New Landscape
A lot of couples don’t anticipate how differently they’ll adapt once they land. One partner might slip easily into Italian life — the routines, the language, the slower mornings, the quieter evenings. The other might feel disoriented for a long time. Homesick. Restless. Irritated by the bureaucracy. Overwhelmed by the lack of structure.
Back home, these differences get absorbed into the machinery of daily life.
In Italy, they echo.
If one thrives and one struggles, the marriage absorbs that imbalance.
If one feels guilty for dragging the other across the ocean, resentment builds.
If one feels trapped, everything tightens.
These aren’t marriage failures.
They are marriage realities.
The danger isn’t disagreement.
The danger is refusing to name it.
When the Marriage Starts to Pull Apart
Most couples don’t expect the move to be the thing that exposes fault lines. They assume the hard years are behind them. But Italy (or any place abroad, really) has a way of stripping life down to the essentials — and if the essentials aren’t working, you notice.
Sometimes it’s a slow drift.Sometimes it’s a sudden, painful clarity.Sometimes the dream that brought you both here turns out to belong more to one than the other.
And then you hit the question nobody wants to say aloud:
What if one of us wants to go back?What if one of us can’t stay?What if the marriage doesn’t survive the move?
These aren’t hypotheticals. They happen more often than retirees admit. And when it happens abroad, the stakes get higher, not because Italy makes it impossible, but because the support systems you leaned on for decades are suddenly very far away.
Separation and Divorce Abroad — The Human Side First
Before we talk about law or visas, the first reality is simple:
Separation abroad feels larger than separation at home.
You don’t have family nearby.You don’t have a familiar social network.You don’t have decades of built-in support.You don’t have the comfort of your old routines.You’re rebuilding your life at the exact moment you’re losing the one you built with someone else.
Some people stay in Italy and start over.Some leave immediately.Some split the difference for a while.
There’s no right answer.
But there are consequences.
What Divorce Actually Looks Like in Italy
Italy is not the bureaucratic monster people fear when it comes to divorce.
But it’s not instant either.
Here’s the landscape, in clean terms that matter:
There are two routes:
Consensual divorce (amicable, faster, cheaper)
Judicial divorce (contested, slower, costlier)
Asset division is not the American 50/50 model.If you married in the U.S., you most likely fall under “separate property,” meaning each keeps what’s legally theirs unless you jointly own specific assets.
The home becomes the hardest piece.
Sell it?Buy the other out?Both move?One stay?
Italy doesn’t bulldoze you, but it does require a clear decision.
Alimony exists, but only based on need and economic imbalance.
It’s not automatic.
And then comes residency.
The ERV Divorce Problem: Uneven Income, Uneven Assets, Uneven Reality
This is the part people skip — until they can’t.
Most couples on the Elective Residency Visa don’t have equal incomes.Often one partner’s passive income carries both spouses.The other may have little or no independent income.While the marriage is intact, who earns what doesn’t matter.But if the marriage ends abroad? Everything changes.
Do you have to prove income again for the permesso?
No.
Italy does not require ERV holders to re-prove financial means at renewal.
But — and this is the part no one tells you — if the marriage ends and one partner was financially dependent, the Questura may require them to show independent resources. Not always, but often.
Because the legal basis for their stay has changed.
Which means the financially weaker spouse may suddenly face:
pressure to demonstrate income
the need for a new lease in their own name
reclassification into a different permesso category
or, in the worst cases, the need to leave Italy and reapply from the beginning
Italy is not cruel.
But it does not assume responsibility for a newly single foreigner with no personal income.
But does it matter who earned more during the marriage?
No.
Italy’s no-fault divorce system does not look at contribution or “who carried whom.”It does not redistribute assets based on fairness, sacrifice, or emotional equity.It looks at legal ownership and property regimes.
What if most assets are in one spouse’s name?
Then those assets stay with that spouse.
If you married in the U.S., Italy treats you as having separate property unless you explicitly opted into community property — and almost no Americans do.
That means:
Savings in your name stay yours
Investments in your name stay yours
Retirement accounts in your name stay yours
Joint property must be divided or sold
And the lower-income spouse?
They may receive modest alimony only if there is clear economic imbalance and demonstrated need. Italy’s support is not designed to replicate American-style spousal maintenance.
What About Divorce Through the U.S.?
You can divorce in the U.S. even while living abroad — if one spouse still meets residency requirements in a state.
But here’s the twist:
U.S. courts can divide U.S. assets.
Italian courts can divide Italian assets.
Sometimes the two processes run in parallel.
It’s not chaos, but it’s not a single clean path either.
What Happens If One Partner Wants to Go Back to the U.S.?
This is common — more common than outright divorce.
One partner burns out on the bureaucracy, the language barrier, the distance from children, the slower pace, the isolation. The other feels rooted and refuses to leave.
Suddenly you have:
Two countries
Two visions of the future
Two sets of laws
One marriage caught between them
And if that becomes separation?
You may be dealing with two legal systems at once:
U.S. courts for U.S.-based assets
Italian courts for Italian property
Visa implications depending on who stays and who goes
It’s survivable.
People do it.
But it is not seamless.
The Scenario Nobody Mentions: Separate Lives in the Same Country
This happens more often than outright divorce.
Two spouses in Italy decide they want different lives — different cities, different paces, different social circles — but they’re not ready (or willing) to legally end the marriage.
It can look like:
One stays in the original town; the other moves to a city.
One returns to the U.S. seasonally.
One becomes deeply embedded in Italian life; the other becomes more transient.
It’s not aligned with the fantasy — but it’s a real adaptation strategy.
The Financial Domino Effect
Retirees rarely think through the financial ripples of separating abroad. But they matter.
Can you afford Italy alone?
Can you meet ERV income requirements solo?
Do you lose healthcare benefits tied to your spouse’s enrollment?
Can you keep the rental if it’s in both names?
Do you have to sell a home at the worst possible moment?
Does one partner return to the U.S. and the other stay?
How do you live on a single retirement income in a foreign country?
None of this is unmanageable.But none of it is fun to solve in the middle of emotional upheaval.
Why Talk About This At All?
Because people don’t.
They talk about packing lists and housing and residency requirements and where to get the best mortadella.
They don’t talk about the part that defines the rest of their lives: how a marriage changes when you remove everything familiar and place it in a new country.
My wife and I are not immune to these questions.We don’t agree on every detail of our future in Italy.That doesn’t make us fragile.It makes us honest.And honesty is the thing that keeps marriages together — not a new backdrop.
Italy can absolutely deepen a relationship.It can also strain it.Most marriages fall somewhere in between.And none of this is a reason not to go.
It’s simply a reason to go with your eyes open, your expectations real, and your conversations deeper than which town has the best market on Thursdays.
You don’t prepare for divorce because you expect it.
You prepare because ignoring the possibility creates the worst version of it.
Italy can be an extraordinary place to grow old together.
But only if both people walk into the next chapter understanding that love is real, life is unpredictable, and the sunset view doesn’t immunize you from the human parts of being in a marriage.
If anything, it makes those parts even clearer.